Editorial: Grand River Expedition is reminder that waterway is worth protecting

Where it begins in Jackson County’s Liberty Township, the river is anything but Grand.

At 15 feet wide and a few inches deep, the flowing water starts as a trickle. But it promises great things to come. By the time the Grand River empties into Lake Michigan in Grand Haven, it has traveled 262 miles, past 18 counties and 158 townships — and right through the heart of Grand Rapids.

The Grand is Michigan’s longest river. It defines the city of Grand Rapids, in fact gave the city its name. It’s flowing waters and wildlife are a communal treasure.

As with every treasure, the river must be fiercely guarded. In the past, that has meant stopping factories and other businesses from dumping waste into the flowing water on the mistaken belief that the current would wash it all away.

Today, vigilance demands halting pollution running into the water from farm fields and cities, clearing trash from the banks, blocking the invasion of dangerous species such as the Asian carp, and recognizing the river as an economic and cultural asset that must be protected and developed.

The Grand has been the subject of a remarkable 17-day series in The Press, pegged on a decennial trip enthusiasts make down the river, from the modest Jackson County headwaters to where it is swallowed by the big lake. The trip, which ended Monday, highlighted the way the river flows through our lives, the startling beauty, and the continued peril posed by human abuse and neglect.

Carved by glaciers at the end of the ice age, the Grand was used as a gathering point for this area’s first inhabitants, the Hopewell Indians. Later it became a highway for the fur trade in the 1600s and the lumber trade in the 1800s. In the 1900s, the river was used as an industrial and municipal dumping ground. The Clean Water Act of 1972 dramatically improved water quality, especially by stopping businesses from spilling pollutants. That law and others at the state and federal level are testimony to the positive power of carefully crafted environmental standards backed by rigorous enforcement.

Pollution from cities continue to pose a threat today, though not as big a threat as in the past. At one time, Grand Rapids dumped hundreds of millions of gallons of raw sewage into the Grand when it rained, the remnant of an outmoded sewer and storm water system. Considerable expense and a lot of hard work have all but eliminated that problem in Grand Rapids. The bigger concern now is in the state capital.

Lansing dumped 694 million gallons into the Grand in 2008, up from 420 million in 2004. Grand Rapids, by contrast, reduced sewage overflows from 196 million gallons in 2004 to 11 million in 2008. Lansing is in the midst of its own separation of sewer and sanitary systems to solve the problem.

Acres of asphalt that capture oil and gas and other pollutants now spill those chemicals into the Grand when it rains. Rainwater carries fertilizers, too, from farm fields into the river. Leaking septic systems pose a serious problem that hasn’t been addressed as systematically as municipal pollution.

The Asian carp, a ravenous fish heading through Chicago’s waterways to Lake Michigan, is a unique threat to rivers such as the Grand. In places along the Mississippi where the fish has established itself, it monopolizes food and starves out other species. The Grand would be an ideal breeding and feeding ground for the carp. Stopping the fish at Lake Michigan’s door should be an urgent goal for the Obama administration, though the president’s support for the cause so far has been lukewarm.

All of these problems can be fixed, provided we draw the right legal lines, aggressively enforce regulations and take an interest. The work of John Krueger is inspiring in that regard. The founder of a group called Environmental Restoration for Rivers, Mr. Krueger has made it his mission to clean trash from the river — junk that includes everything from shopping carts to mattresses. Inspiring, too, is the effort of Grand Rapids organizers to create a whitewater paddling park on the river in downtown Grand Rapids.

All of these people recognize the river as a great community asset and a communal responsibility. In the best West Michigan tradition, they want to pass on the river to their children and grandchildren in better condition than they found it.

Nothing could be more Grand than that.

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